


The Very Last Time

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Big Brother Mycroft, Broken Bones, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Love, Cutting, Drug Addict Sherlock, Gags, Gen, Handcuffs, Hurt Mycroft, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Mycroft Feels, Mycroft Whump, Mycroft-centric, Punching, Sherlock Being a Good Brother, Sherlock To The Rescue, Threats, Torture, Whipping, kicking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft, on his way to rescue his drug-addled brother Sherlock for what he wishes he could think is the very last time, is kidnapped and tortured because of an unpaid debt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Very Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was commissioned by a Lovely Reader who wishes to remain anonymous.

17 July, 2:12 pm _Someone wishes you harm. Wide eyes, brother mine. –SH_

21 July, 3:09 am _Take care with the office staff; household staff hasn’t changed, I assume? –SH_

26 July, 4:27 am _Coming by in a bit. What time is it? –SH_

26 July, 4:49 am _I know you’re in there, Mycroft. Don’t be tedious. –SH_

26 July, 4:52 am _I need you to release more of my trust. I’m looking at a new watch. –SH_

26 July, 4:54 am _You are completely useless. –SH_

*

Mycroft had not heard from his younger brother in over a week. Molly Hooper reported Sherlock let a time-sensitive experiment go bad at the St Bart’s lab, and no one had heard from him at NSY in quite a while, though troubling rumours had surfaced about his recent behavior and appearance. DI Lestrade, in particular, was concerned that Sherlock looked shaky and shifty-eyed, and had left his office in a huff when Lestrade asked him to turn back his shirtsleeves.

“I’ve got work for him,” Lestrade said, a brittle urgency in his voice. “Tell him. If you see him. If it’s work he needs—to keep himself occupied—I’ve got a stack of files he can go after.”

Mycroft had thanked him with a tight hum, and as he strode toward the lifts, instructed his assistant to get ahold of any CCTV footage that might be relevant, to have the locks changed at Sherlock’s flat, freeze his bank accounts, shake trees in every corner of the city.

Sherlock’s phone was either switched off, or dead. Or stolen. Or sold.

Mycroft wished he could promise himself this was absolutely, without doubt, the final time he was going to set his own work and life aside to go chasing after his degenerate, opium-fetishist brother. Sherlock had always thought his pain was unique—that he suffered more acutely, felt more deeply, ached more eloquently than anyone else—when in fact what Mycroft had seen in him since his first shaky steps across the nursery floor was a desperate, pitiful need to suck up adoration like a hoover until he was smothering in it. No amount of stroking was enough for him, no quantity of _attaboys_ adequate to appease him. Sherlock was six lean feet made of need. Their parents had failed to meet it; Mycroft and the other one couldn’t steady him with the upright solidity of a brotherly bond. Sherlock needed input; stimulation; constant, unfailing validation. In lieu of it, he retreated into an anodyne haze of heroin and the half-kind words of men who treated him too roughly. Mycroft was tired of rescuing Sherlock; he was a grown man, after all, and Mycroft was for Pete’s sake the British Government and honestly had neither time nor energy anymore to devote to the task of keeping his brother alive.

A text from his assistant had given him an address in a decidedly unsavoury neighbourhood, and so Mycroft had slid into a hired car just after eleven in the evening to go and retrieve Sherlock; arrangements had been made for him at a rehabilitation center in Tuscany, and no argument Sherlock could give was going to prevent him from attending the program. If he put up a fight, it was over between them. Clearly no one could love Sherlock enough for his liking, enough to save him; Mycroft was finished trying.

Waiting at a red light, Mycroft’s phone buzzed to life inside his suit jacket and he reached for it. In less time than it took for him to move his hand from his knee to his chest, the car doors flew open and there were strong hands everywhere—shoving him from one side, yanking him from the other, closing around his neck as a stiff, dark bag smelling of sizing and petroleum slid down over his head. Something wound tightly round and round, forcing the burlap-like fabric of the bag onto his tongue between forced-open lips—tape, or some kind of strap. His arms were clamped to his sides and tied tight with something like a belt, cold metal cuffs fixed his wrists at the small of his back, and his legs were strapped together from knees to ankles.

A rough thump, heavy on his side so that his hip and shoulder were jolted painfully, then the metallic slam of a car’s boot being shut, and the low purr of an expensive, powerful car engine. Sherlock had been right; someone wished him harm.

*

Mycroft had been kidnapped once before, when he’d still been doing wetwork. It was in South America; the cocaine-trafficking warloads who snatched him out of his backwater motel while he awaited intel on a hit had been solely interested in the fact that he was an Englishman, never even knew about his MI6 connections. He’d taken a few lumps, given them some valuable information about a rival and a small fortune in American dollars—talked and paid his way out of it. But as he tried not to gag around the burlap in his mouth, bounced along on roads clearly in a shoddy state of disrepair, Mycroft felt certain it would take more than smooth talk and fast cash to get him out of his current predicament. And he was not a young man anymore.

They drove for under an hour, the boot came open, and two sets of strong, leather-gloved hands gripped him by his legs and around his chest. They carried him a very short distance—no more than ten yards—into a building, echoes off the walls and floors indicating he was below ground. He was unceremoniously dumped onto a cold, damp floor he took for ancient, decrepit tile, possibly marble. A bathroom, then, or maybe an old servants’ kitchen. Mycroft struggled to right himself, but with his legs clamped together and his hands trapped behind him, he found he couldn’t get leverage enough even to sit.

A sudden and vicious boot to his gut and Mycroft grunted against the gag, struggled for breath. He curled into himself, knees to chest. Uselessly, he clutched and balled his hands, worked his wrists a bit in the metal cuffs. He braced for another blow, but none came. Breath coming hard and fast through his nose and around the gag, he stretched his neck and worked his jaw trying to loosen it, but to no avail. He made a noise at once questioning and demanding: _Who are you? Who sent you? What do you want?_ There was only one presently in the room with him; he thought there had been three pulling him from his car, and he’d heard one of the ones who’d carried him in here leave, slamming a heavy door. Mycroft cursed himself for not having even wondered about the driver—he wasn’t familiar, might have been in on it.

“Your man owes a lot of money to people don’t like waitin fer it.”

Irish. Young. Undereducated.

“He talks a lot.”

Sherlock gave them information about him, out of his mind on drugs, out of money (of course he was; Mycroft controlled disbursals of his monthly allowance because of just such occasions as this latest relapse). With any luck, these thugs were only interested in settling Sherlock’s debt.

Mycroft nodded vigorously, _uh-huh_ ’d in agreement: Sherlock _did_ talk a lot.

“You’re flush; you could cover his debt, easy.”

More nodding.

Gloved hands grabbed at his hands in the metal cuffs, and Mycroft balled them into tight fists.

“Got this nice ring, first.”

It was useless to struggle but Mycroft kept it up. Eventually, his fingers were peeled open, the base of his palm crushed so it was impossible to maintain a fist. The ring was tugged off, catching on the knuckle, which burned and bled. Thick fingers wrapped tightly around his ring finger, then, and yanked back hard. Mycroft felt it break and dislocate. He screamed.

Struggling to get control of his breath, fighting against his brain’s attempt to block out the shock of pain through loss of consciousness, Mycroft maneuvered himself by rolling onto his knees, knelt upright.

“Your man says it’s you holds his money.” Hands went into the pockets of his suit jacket, then yanked him upward by his elbow to rifle in his trousers. “Hmph.” A noise between satisfied and disgusted; the thug had found his money clip, but Mycroft was carrying less than £200. There was an explosion of pain in his low back, beside his cuffed hands, that made him arch wildly and shout against the mouthful of burlap now soaked with the saliva he could not close his lips to swallow.

The strap pinning his arms to the sides of his torso was pulled loose and slid away. His arms now slightly more mobile, Mycroft struggled futilely against the handcuffs, rubbing the skin of his wrists raw. A whizzing noise cut the air a half-second before the strap came thundering down across his upper back and shoulders. There was such force behind the blow, Mycroft was thrust forward, curling over his knees. A series of stinging _thwacks_ landed one after the next, his tormentor grunting with the effort, no time even to take a breath between them. The strap was heavy and wide, sounded like leather, felt like nails on fire. Tears stung his eyes, and Mycroft moaned out loud against the gag.

“Whaddaya reckon it took for your man to give you up?” the thug grumbled.

A too-vivid image of Sherlock bound and gagged the way Mycroft was now, beaten, kicked, whipped—maybe worse—sprang to Mycroft’s mind. He knew his brother would have borne a lot, certainly more than Mycroft could; he was younger, stronger, and more stubborn. Mycroft did not want to—could not—contemplate what Sherlock would have suffered to have finally broken down and handed Mycroft over as payment for his drugs debt.

“Heard he got it pretty bad. I wun’t on that job, myself.”

Mycroft groaned his dismay.

“Pretty fuckin’ bad. . .’swhat I hear. Maybe he didn’t get up again.” Mycroft could hear his tormentor walking a slow circle around him. “‘Swhat I hear, anyway.”

Mycroft’s body heaved with a barely contained sob.

“Don’t matter now though.”

A thick soled boot against Mycroft’s arm shoved him over onto his side and he tried to curl up small. Indiscriminate, poorly-aimed blows rained down all along the side of his body—his hip, his shoulder, then so hard on his forearm he was afraid it would break.  When the whipping finally ceased, Mycroft shuddered, tried to make himself smaller still; it wasn’t much of a defense but it was all he could manage. He bit the gag and clenched his good hand into a fist, digging his nails into his palm.

The thug balled up the loose fabric of the sack covering his head, yanked upward so the strap holding it shut tightened painfully around Mycroft’s neck and he had no choice but to follow it _up_. Thick fingers around his bicep hurried him along. Kneeling up again, head rushing, he had no time to recover his bearings before a heavy blow to the side of his head (fist, no weapon) knocked him sideways. Somehow, Mycroft managed to right himself before he toppled.

“Don’t worry, mate. We got all night,” the kidnapper muttered. “At _least_.”

Mycroft felt bruises already blooming across his back; every slight movement he made brought a fresh shock of pain to every place the strap had landed. He flexed and bent the fingers of his good hand, worked his wrist a bit to test for a fracture. The broken ring finger of his other hand stuck out at an utterly wrong angle, his hand swollen and hot with blood that now couldn’t find its way back up past the brutally tight metal cuff. His feet below his bound calves had gone completely numb.

All at once, a firework of agony—another punch to the face that caught his cheekbone and nose. He tasted blood running down his throat, felt it sliding hot over his lips, along his jaw. He blacked out.

*

“Wakey, wakey!”

Mycroft swam up to consciousness, thoughts assembling themselves at an underwater pace until he broke through the surface: Kidnapped. Beaten. Sherlock’s drug debt. Sherlock probably dead.

He groaned, fought back a wave of nausea, rolled himself from aching back to battered side and back again until he gained momentum enough to right himself, knelt up.

“Got somethin’ I been wantin’ to try.”

Mycroft moaned, tensed every muscle, waiting.

The sack around his head was grabbed, tugged at, and there was a quick, sharp spark of heat against his cheek Mycroft couldn’t make sense of until he heard the ropey fibres of the bag being sliced apart, and even the dim light spilling in through the slit was almost blinding. The slit grew, the thug’s hands gripped and tugged and the sack was pulled apart at the newly-created rift until it was bunched around his face just above the level of the gag. Mycroft reflexively shook his head, trying to get his nose clear of it, but his chin was caught and held fast in one of those gloved hands, his face tilted just slightly upward. The kidnapper loomed behind him; Mycroft couldn’t get a glimpse.

The other leather-clad hand appeared in front of his face, and in its grip glinted a long, shining, surgical scalpel. Panic began to edge beneath Mycroft’s skin, from his limbs inward toward his heart, like a sheen of black tar. Mycroft made urgent noises against the gag, tried to shake his head _No_ but the grip on his jaw was relentless.

“You’re pretty smart, I reckon, probably went to a lot of school.”

Mycroft groaned, and eventually nodded a bit against the hand holding him.

“D’you reckon—would your eyeball fall out if I cut you right ‘long here?” The scalpel went to the outer corner of his right eye, and Mycroft froze. Not sinking in, but just grazing—deep enough to cut but not to seriously wound—the scalpel dragged back from the corner of his eye to his temple. Once he felt it lift away from his skin, Mycroft shook his head _No_ , as much as he was able.

“No,” the thug mused, and the absolute calm in his voice was enough to make Mycroft worry he might vomit against the gag in his mouth. He bit down on it instead, as much as he could, the outer corners of his lips stretching and aching in protest. “Eyes got, wot, like roots. Tie ‘em to your brain.”

Mycroft nodded. Tears spilled down his face and his upper lip was damp with mucous dripping from his nose.

“Could use the cut to make room, though.” The scalpel pressed slightly harder this time against the outer corner of his eye and Mycroft squeezed them shut. “Then just reach in and pull it out. Good thing I’m wearing gloves , I supp—“

Mycroft felt the thug’s body jerk backward suddenly, releasing his chin, dropping the scalpel, which rang against the tile floor like a bell as it landed, then slid away. Instinct took over and Mycroft threw himself forward, wriggling almost uselessly across the floor—there was rustling, skin slapping and fists thudding, a dragging sound—and he was a few yards away before he turned to look.

A flexing forearm with veins standing out against pale skin was fixed tight around the thug’s neck, and he scrabbled with slackening hands to pull it off. An enormous hand reached up from behind the kidnapper, wrapped around his forehead and yanked sideways. A crack echoed through the room, the forearm loosened, the thug hit the ground weightily.

_Sherlock._

Mycroft sobbed out relief, rolled his forehead against the cool, dirty tile of the floor.

“Mycroft!” Sherlock went for the gag first, couldn’t manage it with just his hands, leaned away and fetched the scalpel. He cut away thick layers of tape and pulled them off his brother’s face.

“He told me. . .” Mycroft started, but choked on a sob. His body was aching now with relief as much as pain. Sherlock quickly unfastened a thick leather strap binding Mycroft knee to ankle and tossed it aside. The rush of blood to his feet made Mycroft nearly shout, and he instinctively bent his body toward his feet, wanting to rub the pain away. Sherlock quickly turned the thug’s pockets out, found the handcuff key and went to work on them.

“Your finger’s badly broken,” Sherlock reported. Then, quieter, “I’m sure you already know that.” With gentle, gingerly movements of his long hands, he helped Mycroft shift his arms around in front of him. His shoulders cramped and fought but Mycroft managed it. “Can you stand? I’ll hold you up but we need to go. _Now_.”

Sherlock looked like hell: bloodshot eyes, appalling clothes that stank of body odours and mildew and a high, sharp chemical smell Mycroft knew was related to cocaine-smoking. His hair was in mad, greasy knots, stuck up wildly away from his face. Sherlock helped Mycroft to his feet, but they wouldn’t bear him, still bee-buzzing with the rush of fresh blood, and Mycroft fell heavily against Sherlock’s side.

“This is my fault,” Sherlock muttered angrily—chastising himself—“I followed up on those threats on your life; I knew this was coming. . .” he shook his head, pursed his lips. “I let it go by the wayside because I just _had_ to get high. _Mycroft_.” He bore nearly all of Mycroft’s weight against his side, arm around Mycroft’s waist, holding him up. “I can’t tell you how sor—“

Mycroft wrapped his arms around Sherlock then, hard, crushed him to his chest, even kissed his smelly hair behind his ear. “He told me you were dead. He said you gave me up. I shouldn’t have doubted you. You would never.”

Sherlock let himself be held. “Your agent in Belfast. That’s who gave you up. He’s dead, by the way.”

Mycroft nodded against Sherlock’s neck, withdrew a bit. Sherlock tucked his shoulder under Mycroft’s arm. “We have to go. Ready?”

“Steady on, brother mine,” Mycroft said quietly.

“I’m going to rehab,” Sherlock offered meekly as they exited the room—not a bathroom or kitchen, as Mycroft had presumed, but a shower room in a disused lads’ club or similar. Tawdry. They shuffled up a few stairs, and Sherlock shoved open a door, half-dragging Mycroft out into the alley.

“Yes,” Mycroft agreed. “You are.”

They started toward the brighter light of the street.

“Nothing like this,” Sherlock said gravely, “ _ever_ happens again. Not to you. Not because of me.”

“If I didn’t have you to fuss over, Sherlock,” Mycroft murmured, and felt light-headed, vision going grey at the edges, “My life would be insufferably boring.”

“I’ll try to assure you’ll always have me to fuss over, in that case.”

Mycroft drifted then, giving over to his body’s urgent plea to _rest, succumb, surrender_. Sherlock rearranged their bodies so Mycroft would not fall. They emerged onto the pavement of an ordinary-looking block of shops and curry houses and rundown flats, every other streetlight flickering or gone out altogether. A black sedan glided up beside them and Sherlock helped Mycroft settle, then walked around the car and got in the other side.

“Royal London Hospital, I think,” Mycroft told the driver—one he recognized, had known for years to be both loyal and discreet. “Then my brother is going to rehab for the _very_ last time.”

He hazarded a glance at Sherlock, who was rolling his hands over each other as if washing them in slow motion. Mycroft reached with his uninjured hand, and covered Sherlock’s hands, stilling them. They stayed that way for the rest of the journey, with Mycroft’s thumb absently stroking Sherlock’s knuckles, and the engine’s soothing, deep hum the only sound.

 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at fuckyeahfighlock, and on twitter @FicAuthorPoppy


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